Teen Titans #1 Review - We Know Who To Call
First off, I wanna get this out of the way: Regardless of how you feel about this new volume of Teen Titans, you have to admit that the team working it is a MASSIVE improvement from the last one. I generally don't like to call out certain creators, since I know everyone has the right to like who and what they want, but I also have the right to my own opinion, and in said opinion, Scott Lobdell is BAD writer. Every comic I have ever seen that had his name on it was mediocre at best, and downright audience insulting at worst. And let's not even get into the slime's controversial behaviour towards women. Point being, I am SO glad his run on Teen Titans got cancelled and this new one got started.
Another major plus that I'd like to point out. I want you all to take a close look at this image of the previous team of Teen Titans, minus Skitter who went missing for well over a year.
Now look over at the current team. You know what's improved? THE COLOURS! With the exception of red being repeated with Red Robin and Wonder Girl, everyone has a very distinct look and colour-scheme (although can someone please tell me when Beast Boy got to be green again? I'm not complaining, I'm just a little confused). And while we lost almost half of the team (Skitter, Kid Flash, Solstice, and Superboy), this is still a diverse team with lots of area to cover, and there are plenty of young heroes that could potentially join the team later, like Wally West, Vibe, Spoiler, Emiko, or Bluebird. There's so much potential for what they can do with this new team, which leads me to another positive: THEY ACTUALLY BEHAVE AND ARE ORGANIZED LIKE A TEAM! Sure, there's some oiling to the gears that needs to be done, but for the most part, they aren't questioning each other, aren't acting like dicks to each other, and they got the job done!
Now let's talk about a couple of things I didn't like. First off, let's talk about the girls on the team for a sec. Not that their personalities bothered me or anything, mind you. In fact, this is the first time in a comic I can think of that Cassie made it from start to finish without saying anything that got on my nerves. No, it's how they look, although it's for different reasons for both. On Raven's side, the new costume still bugs me. It's not even that it's a bad costume or anything, it just pales in comparison to her old costume. On the other hand, we have Wonder Girl, who looks to be a little too well endowed on the cover. And there are the what Titans?...Yeah. Kinda makes me uncomfortable is all I'm saying. And before anyone brings up Starfire...well, yeah, to be fair, she made me rather uncomfortable as well.
The other thing that bugged me about this issue is...well, the people in Manhattan in this comic are serious dickholes. Right after the Teen Titans save a bus full of kids from a group of heavily armed terrorists, one of the adults is too preoccupied by the fact that "with all the superheroes in New York, it's just my luck to get rescued by the two who look like a couple of-" and he never got to finish his sentence because Bunker slammed him between a wall and his constructs. And while some people might take this as being wildly out of character for someone who is usually the optimistic nice guy of the team, I would just like to remind everyone that Miguel is openly gay, and that his boyfriend was very recently in the hospital. That guy's lucky he wasn't seriously injured.
Overall, while this isn't exactly shaping up to be my favourite run of the Titans, I will say that I would take it in a heartbeat over what we've had to deal with since the start of the New 52. All that bullcrap with The Culling and so on? Over. And yeah, this team IS a little rough around the edges, but I think that's more reactionary to the environment they're in. Also, while three terrorists died, it was their leader that triggered the explosives in their suits, and if the Titans had time to disable them AND save all the kids on the bus, of whom there were zero fatalities, I'm sure they would've. So yeah, this issue gets a good grade as a decent start, and it left me wanting more, so I'll probably stick with this book for a while, see where it goes.